Racial bias case: Pepsi Beverages Co to pay $3.1 mn

London, Jan 12: Pepsi Beverages Co. has agreed to pay $3.1 million in a bid to settle charges of racial discrimination levelled against it for using criminal background checks to sieve through job applications.

According to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the company turns out workers with arrest records and has so far rejected more than 300 black applicants.

Under the policy, applicants who have a history of arrest records were not hired, despite the fact they were not pronounced guilty of a crime. The company also denied work opportunity to those arrested and found guilty of minor offences.

The EEOC said that using sentence and arrest records to deny employment opportunities if not relevant to the job can be illegal.

Reports reveal that the company has now taken up a new criminal background policy.

OneIndia News